Dragonworld

by Byron Preiss

  A number of soldiers saw him running. They shouted and gave pursuit, but none were close enough. The Fandoran leaped up and seized one of the trailing ropes of Thalen’s ship. He clambered quickly up it, hand over hand.

  Tweel heard the shouting, and saw what was happening. Quickly he seized a crossbow and fired a bolt at the Fandoran. The wildly swinging rope, however, made him miss. Then the Fandoran was on the ship.

  The first intimation that Thalen had of him was when the craft lurched from the sudden extra weight. The Windrider was thrown off balance. By the time he had scrambled to his feet, the Fandoran was on board, and leaping toward him. He grappled with Thalen, lifting him with the intent of hurling him overboard. Thalen boxed the other’s ears painfully, causing the Fandoran’s grip to loosen. They struggled about, their shifting weights causing the craft to spin about.

  Tweel raised his crossbow again and sighted. Hawkwind saw the action and shouted, but too late; the bolt whistled through the air. When Tweel had fired, the Fandoran’s back had been toward him. But the struggles of the two men turned them about.

  Kiorte, watching helplessly from his own ship, cried out in horror as an arrow suddenly blossomed from his brother’s back. The force of the striking bolt threw both men off balance; they staggered three steps, and the Fandoran’s back hit the railing. They both toppled over, to hit the ground.

  Kiorte brought his windship down quickly. When it was close to the ground, he leaped from it, swinging down a rope. Leaving others to catch the lines and bring the ship down safely, he ran to his brother.

  Hawkwind ran also, as did everyone not occupied in bringing in Kiorte’s windship or chasing the slowly descending other ship. Kiorte reached the bodies first. He knelt and gently removed Thalen’s broken form from the dead grip of the Fandoran. Then he turned, cradling his brother’s body, and looked at Hawkwind. Hawkwind stopped; the hatred in Kiorte’s eyes struck him like a fist.

  “He is dead,” Kiorte said.

  Hawkwind said nothing. Neither did anyone else. Kiorte stood slowly, trembling. He took a step toward Hawkwind. Two soldiers stepped forward quickly, swords half-drawn to protect their Monarch. Hawkwind touched them on the shoulder gently, motioning them to step aside. He faced Kiorte.

  “Thalen is dead,” Kiorte said again, “and you, Hawkwind, I hold to be responsible!” He half-shouted, half-sobbed, “You sent the troops to the Southland! This ridiculous battle would have been over by now had you not!” He turned, his eyes wild and shining with unshed tears; turned about wildly, staring at the faces before him. Among them was Tweel, the crossbow still in his shocked grasp. When Kiorte saw him, he made an inarticulate noise and leaped toward him, hands outstretched for Tweel’s neck. It took Willen and several others to restrain him. Kiorte raged in their grip for a moment, then, with an obvious effort, regained control of himself. Soldiers turned away, uncomfortable at the sight of the self-contained Prince exhibiting such emotion. Kiorte looked at Hawkwind again.

  “I think perhaps Evirae is right,” he said. Then he stooped, gathered Thalen’s body in his arms, and walked to his windship. He laid his brother tenderly on the deck, and lifted the windship into the air again.

  Everyone watched him sail swiftly away toward Overwood. Vora put a hand on Hawkwind’s shoulder. “You are not responsible,” he said softly. “Kiorte’s grief spoke.”

  Still Hawkwind said nothing. He watched until the windship disappeared into the clouds. Then he turned slowly and stared toward the mist-shrouded hills where the Fandoran army hid.

  * * *

  The northerly winds carried the windship quickly. In little more than an hour’s sailing, Amsel had already flown over the forest of the Northweald. “I guess I’m a better navigator than I imagined,” he murmured. “Then, again, I’ve had little to decide in the grip of these winds.”

  Soon he spied the low cliffs and beaches of Simbala’s northern shore. The craft was over them in a moment, and Amsel gasped as the gray flatness of the water came into view.

  “Dragonsea,” he whispered. “From here on, it is all new to me.”

  He turned toward the bow of the ship and saw in the clouds ahead a black shape bobbing slowly up and down. The coldrake flew ahead of him, and Amsel was sure it would continue to do so until they had reached their destination, whatever it might be.

  He scurried forward and secured a jib sheet that had come loose under the force of the wind.

  “What was it that Ephrion said?” he asked himself. Then he nodded. “ ‘Remember the legends you heard as a child; they may have more truth to them than we ever imagined.’ ”

  He thought about the phrase for a moment, and then checked the cleats on the windward side.

  “All secure,” he said in relief. “I guess it would be safe to have a quick look at the cabin.”

  As he hurried toward the stairs, he thought about the war and the young woman who had sacrificed her freedom for his safety. There were many to whom he owed his life now, and Amsel realized with a mixture of determination and sadness that his days of solitude, of experimentation and planting, of inventing and construction, would not soon be seen again. He had always thought of himself as a man who bothered nobody and was unbothered in return. But then he had befriended Johan and . . . he shook his head. There was nothing to be gained in reliving that moment again!

  He opened the door of the cabin. He found it to be an ingeniously designed area, making good use of space. Wooden cabinets were everywhere, and the polish of the chrome and quartz handles glistened like stars in the sky. Four hammocks of tanselweb were hung across the walls at the opposite side of the cabin. Behind them was a row of small glass portals.

  Amsel opened the first cabinet and jumped back in fright. Then he laughed as he realized the furry masses were blankets for the crew.

  He opened a second and third cabinet, finding nothing but ropes and sail patches. When he opened the last cabinet, however, he smiled with delight. On a shelf, protected from the air by white gauze, were a dozen loaves of bread.

  Famished, and feeling weak after all that he had been through, Amsel made a meal of a small loaf. He could not identify the grain. The bread was light and faintly sweet. He assumed, correctly, that it had been baked especially for Windriders to sustain them on their rigorous voyages.

  As he ate, Amsel listened to the steady howling of the wind. He noticed that it did not lessen or vary, and he recalled watching high wisps of clouds from Greenmeadow Mesa scudding along at a constant pace. He wondered if such winds as this blew continually in the bleak upper reaches of the sky. What a convenient way to travel long distances—assuming, of course, that there were other such air currents going in different directions.

  As he finished the bread, he began to feel quite sleepy.

  “No,” he said. “I must stay awake!” He took a blanket from the shelf, and wrapped it about him, then returned to the chill winds of the upper deck. He sat down on a small ledge set within the bow and gazed out sleepily through the mists. He saw once again, above the northern sea, the familiar flapping of the coldrake’s wings, and continued to do so as the windship floated gently into a large gray cloud. After a while the sound of the rushing wind and the unbroken movement of the creature’s wings took on a hypnotic effect. Amsel felt himself growing sleepy again, and this time he could not resist.

  He awoke with a shock. The windship was keeling wildly and losing height. “What a fool I am!” Amsel shouted, and he jumped quickly from the bow to grab hold of a leadline snapping against the folds of a sail.

  As he did, the fur blanket dropped to the deck. “I’ll get it when I come back,” he muttered, but a moment later he realized that the weather was freezing cold.

  He snatched up the fur and peeked over the hull. There was still nothing but sea. In the distance, an occasional inlet dotted the turbulent waters. He glanced north, and for a moment he thought he could see the silhouette of a shoreline, but it vanished in the fog.

  Amsel hurried back to
the task of securing the leadline. He had no idea how long he had slept—an hour, or a day. The gray light was the same.

  “My friend still flies ahead of me,” he murmured, as the ship plunged through a cottony cloud.

  He ran toward the intricate rigging at the stern of the windship. The craft was starting to rock turbulently, for the side force of the wind had become much stronger than the forward thrust.

  From his short voyages in the strait, Amsel knew that he would have to use these currents to balance the ship and keep it on its course to the north.

  Taking the sheets of the mainsails in hand, Amsel raised his face to the bitter winds. “Good. Both winds are constant.” He pulled in gently on the sheets. His strategy now was to use the largest sail to effect a falling-off in the force of the eastern wind which pressured it, blowing north behind the windship. This, in turn, would change the effect of the wind blowing north behind him.

  “It has been a long time,” said Amsel, “but if I remember correctly, this sail”—he pulled in hard on the large windward sail—”will do it.”

  It took a moment for the sail to respond, but after a brief interval of even luffing and falling off, the windship started to regain its balance, sailing forward in a northerly direction. Amsel sighed in relief. Ephrion had been correct—he could fly a windship!

  Much later, he was still heading north. He could no longer see below the windship, for the clouds had grown more frequent and denser as the flight progressed. He thought he was no longer over the sea.

  Amsel felt most alone and small. He wished—he, Amsel the hermit!—for a companion, another human being with whom he could speak. The feeling was uncommon to him. He had never known loneliness, for he had always lived alone. Yet there had been a time when a small child brought love and laughter into his world.

  Amsel listened to the sounds around him, to the song of the sails, the whistling of the icy wind, and the distant flapping of the coldrake’s wings.

  What did he remember about dragons?

  Over the years he had not paid special attention to the writings about them. After all, dragons were considered creatures of fantasy, and his interests were of a more scientific nature. As a child he had read the most common tales of the dragons, in which they were noble creatures, friendly to man, living in the glowing caverns of gigantic cliffs. In these fairy stories, children of the Southland would be rewarded for acts of goodness by being taken for long adventures on a dragon’s back. He remembered ancient pictures of children happily clinging tightly to a dragon’s horns as it flew above the southern sea.

  As he grew older, his contact with the legends was less frequent. In his readings he would sometimes find references to and descriptions of dragons in the literature of other lands. In retrospect, he realized how exceptionally consistent the descriptions of the creatures had been. He had attributed it then to a common origin of the stories in the Southland, but now he thought that there might be a more startling explanation.

  The foreign legends were more extensive than those told by Fandorans to their children. He remembered a Bunduran author who wrote page after page about the glowing caverns, words that seemed as bright as the moon itself. There was another brief poetic mention of the treasure of the dragons, fabled stones with the secrets of the creatures hidden inside them.

  Throughout the tales the dragons had remained consistent in their appearance. They had four legs, eyes of dark blue, beautiful wings, and the ability to breathe fire. Amsel contrasted this description with that of the coldrake, which had only two legs, eyes of bright yellow, and gave no indication at all of an ability to breathe flame.

  Although he was grateful for that apparent lack of talent in the creature, it puzzled him. If it was a coldrake, a “cousin” to the dragons, as Ephrion had explained, then why did it not also breathe flame? Perhaps it did, Amsel mused, but had had no reason to do so. He admonished himself not to provoke it in order to find out. There were times when scientific inquiry could be fatal.

  Coldrake or dragon, he thought, where are you taking me? To the glowing caverns? To a forgotten land? How much of your legend is not legend at all?

  Hours later, he learned the answer.

  He had been traveling in a cloud driven by the wind for some time, when it at last broke apart. The setting sun revealed that there was a shore not far ahead. It was a shore unlike any in Fandora or Simbala.

  He passed quickly through another cloud, and when his view had cleared, he saw the terrain beyond the shore.

  It was a bleak land, a blasted land, a land of sharp edges and needle spires—loneliness and desperation given cold embodiment. It was a land of darkness, a land that denied human life. A river wound its way through shores that were slabs of lava. Beyond them were weathered, angular piles of rock, as though tossed casually by a giant’s child. The colors of the rocks were blacks, browns, and iron red, and the wind swept defiantly through them with a sound that made Amsel cover his ears in pain. Beyond the rocks, mountains rose that dwarfed the peaks of Simbala. Proud and defiant, some sheeted in ice, most too steep for snow, they continued beyond the river as far as Amsel could clearly see. On the periphery to the north, he could see a vast, glittering wall of white.

  “It is not what I expected,” said Amsel, “but I did not really have any expectations at all.” He wondered where the coldrake was taking him. There would be no chance of the windship surviving a landing in those sawtooth peaks.

  As though propelled by his thought, the creature began to bear slightly to the east. Amsel shifted the steering levers and followed. At the same time, he decreased the flow of Sindril gas, bringing the windship down out of the wind’s fiercer stratum. The coldrake was flying slower now. He did not wish to deal with the consequences of overtaking it.

  Slowly, then, he proceeded north. His hands remained firmly on the steering levers. The landscape remained distressingly consistent, until Amsel spotted in the distance a tall slender peak of black basalt. Its base was wreathed in mist, which he assumed emanated from hot springs—this was definitely a volcanic land. Its top was obscured by clouds. The coldrake swooped up toward it; this, Amsel was sure, was the creature’s destination. As it approached, Amsel thought he detected movement in the mists. The windship passed into the tepid vapors, and its Sindril jewels glowed brighter as the humidity increased. Then, suddenly, the fog cleared. As the craft passed quickly through it, Amsel looked down. What he saw was a land no legend had ever revealed.

  The huge peak was riddled with cave openings, and in seemingly every one of them was the serpentine body of a coldrake. A hissing, like a snake’s nest, came faintly to him as he drew closer; he was not sure whether the sound was made by the hot springs or by the hundreds of coldrakes who appeared to be watching. It was a scene to inspire madness. Some crouched upon ledges, tearing at the carcasses of animals. Others flapped slowly through the mist, croaking mournfully at each other.

  Amsel had known no sight more frightening; it was a nightmare too horrible for any dream. He shuddered at the thought of a plunge into their depths, but forced himself to watch.

  The hissing grew louder. Proudly, as if in silent communication, the coldrakes raised their heads. Then a hundred wings unfolded, and their mottled gray bodies emerged from the cliffs in a huge swarm.

  Amsel screamed. The creatures were above him, shrieking with a murderous sound that mocked the wind. He watched in terror as they started to circle the windship, but as they did, he saw another, distant sight beyond them. As the fog rose above the spire, another coldrake, twice the size of the others, was perched upon its slender tip. Its yellow eyes were fixed directly on him.

  Amsel watched those eyes, paralyzed with fear. This coldrake, black as the spire, was unlike the others in more than its size. It seemed to be observing him with an intelligence that was lacking in the others. He suspected that the dark coldrake held domination over those circling the windship. He listened as it shrieked to the others below it. The cry was echoed by the
circling monsters, and Amsel started to weep as a circle of dark wings came closer and closer to the windship’s sails.

  Then suddenly the shrieking stopped as the larger creature took to the sky. Its wings were longer and darker than its brothers’, and as it wheeled away from the spire, the other coldrakes returned to their warren.

  As they did, Amsel leaped for the steering lever; the motion of their wings had sent the windship keeling. He wanted to turn the ship back, and he tried to tack, but the sails were trapped in the updraft of the hot spring below it.

  Amsel gazed up. The sky seemed suddenly empty, but there was a faint whistling in the air. Then, from a height concealed by the windship’s sails, the huge coldrake attacked. Its claws cut swiftly into the delicate ribbing of a balloon sail, and the gas exploded from within it.

  Amsel screamed as the ship fell. The coldrake swooped down again, slashing the other large sail. As it ripped, Amsel caught hold of its sheet. He swung outward, past the hull, then back, just missing the mast as he did. The windship began to spiral downward, and the sheet tore free of the steering mechanism. Amsel, still holding it, sailed out beyond the fog. He suddenly felt heat against his skin, and he realized that if he landed in the hot springs below, he would be boiled alive.

  He glanced downward and saw a jagged rock coming into view through the fog. He tried to shift his body away, but as he did, there was an unexpected thrust of cool air against his back. A black shadow appeared in the fog above him. Seconds later, huge talons clutched his vest.

  Amsel screamed again, and the yellow eyes of the coldrake peered at him through the swirling mist.